


home is wherever I'm with you

by magisterequitum



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-13
Updated: 2011-04-13
Packaged: 2017-10-18 00:47:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/183153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterequitum/pseuds/magisterequitum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after 6.18 'Lauren'. They are incomplete and just a little bit lost. But isn't everyone?</p>
            </blockquote>





	home is wherever I'm with you

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for 6.18 'Lauren'. This was written before 6.19 'With Friends Like These'. Title taken from the song 'Home' by Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros.

"Other things may change us, but we start and end with family."

Anthony Brandt

 

 

Somewhere seven people lay roses on glossy wood and watch as the coffin disappears into the ground. They are a group. They are a family. They are angry, they are sad, they mourn. They are missing one. The family is incomplete.

Two exchange a look, secrets hidden in their quick glance. Two know what the other five do not: what really is inside the wooden box. Their anger is not the same. The secret tears at them. It would be so easy to let go, to let it slip from between hard pressed lips bound by the need to protect.

That is their burden to bear.

The others have their grief.

It’s unknown who has it worse.

 

 

Somewhere else a woman wakes up with the names Emily Prentiss and Lauren Reynolds simultaneously in her mind. She has been in and out of consciousness for days, hidden away in a private hospital room under a false name.

Her knee throbs, the brand on her breast burns as if no time has passed, and she can still feel the wooden stake pushing through the skin of her stomach. She traces the jagged line of stitches and wants to vomit. Done, done, let me go, she had been done.

Emily Prentiss. Lauren Reynolds. Two names, two women, one real, one not. The problem with slipping into a fake life is that after awhile the edges of reality bleed in and it’s not so fake anymore.

It’s too confusing, too trying, too hard to decide who she is.

She goes back to sleep.

 

 

They are given a week off.

The team is exhausted, mentally, physically, emotionally. They are drained. One week and their desks and offices sit empty. A portrait is added to the wall and watches over the emptiness and the air that hangs heavy with loss.

Morgan tears down walls in the houses he owns.

Rossi drinks wine and remembers.

Seaver fights with the feeling that she has no right to mourn like the others.

Reid packs up Emily’s things, alone, because someone has to.

Garcia takes Sergio and does not fight the tears.

Hotch holds his son close and is reminded of too many things.

JJ puts false names together and creates a new person.

One week.

 

 

Two women meet outside a café.

It is night and they blend in. No one around them will remember the two women talking in low voices that do not carry beyond their table. They want to say more, but they do not.

Instead, JJ slides over a folder.

Emily takes it, fingers the tab keeping it closed. Her boots make no sound on the cobblestones as she walks away.

“Be careful,” JJ says to the empty air.

 

 

They go back to work.

Serial killers aren’t known to be polite. They don’t wait for the proper amount of time to pass for grief and such. Someone is always being killed somewhere. It’s their job and so they go back. It’s different, of course. Her desk stays empty in the bullpen. No one touches it or the stuff in the drawers, but someone has tidied up the loose files.

They try.

Garcia wears dark colors, and it looks so odd and wrong; it takes Morgan twice as much to get her to smile.

Seaver graduates and there is an attempt to celebrate, but she doesn’t want it or push for it. Instead, she reads more, studies more, looks things up. She doesn’t fill the missing spot, the missing gap, but she tries.

They go back to work and try to pretend they’re not falling apart one by one.

 

 

Emily doesn’t stay in Paris. She settles down in Metz, close enough to the border to move quickly if needed. It’s a one bedroom place not much bigger than the apartment she had at Yale. She checks in every three days with her handler. He tells her whether it’s safe or not to stay.

There’s a café close by, and she goes and sits there every day. She tries to focus on nothing, but no matter how hard she forces her mind to go blank she always ends up people watching. Gestures, words, the downward turn of a lip, or the widening of eyes.

That’s the trouble with profiling. It becomes so second nature after a time that it can’t be shut off. She watches and makes up stories that are probably true.

In her place there’s a mirror on the wall. It’s right after the front door, and she can’t escape looking at her reflection each time she passes it. The reflection is unrecognizable. The hair is short, the ends barely brushing her chin, and the color is too light. The eyes are wide and the cheekbones are even more gaunt, the face sunken in.

She doesn’t know who it is she sees and that scares her more than anything. She covers the mirror.

 

 

Weeks turn into months.

In Louisiana Reid gets a headache and tries to cover it up when it sends him throwing up in the bathroom. They all notice.

Children are targeted in Maine and Hotch is fueled by anger; anger at so many things.

When Morgan takes down an unsub so hard that they all hear the sound the man’s head makes on the pavement, they realize how far they’ve unraveled.

Strauss suggests grief counseling.

There’s nothing any of them can say in retaliation.

 

 

Her handler calls and Emily moves to Switzerland. From there she goes to Germany, Romania and then back up to Austria. She avoids Italy.

Months pass and the pain on her stomach fades, the scar pulling less and less. Days pass where she doesn’t scratch at the brand over her breast. She can only get a few things out of her handler about Doyle’s whereabouts. It’s better if she doesn’t know, he tells her. She thinks it’s more like they don’t want her interfering and doing it herself again.

There’s nothing for her to do in Austria. She can only chew her finger nails so many times before the skin bleeds too much.

She can’t talk to the team, her family, not directly at least. What she does is write them letters that never make it into envelopes. Scraps of paper, napkins, and newspapers. She writes over the foreign languages and pours out her grief and anger and guilt and feelings in black and white.

Her behavior is textbook. The problem with profilers though is that they look at everyone else but themselves.

 

 

There are five stages of grief.

Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. They all have the first four in some form or another. None of them have accepted anything. Strauss interviews them individually, but can’t find enough to ground them; for once she doesn’t seem out to ruin everything in their lives.

It doesn’t matter though because grief counseling is put aside when Ian Doyle surfaces to the West. He’s hunting for Declan and leaving behind bodies who get in his way. They don’t find out for several weeks, but Garcia connects the dots. She’s kept a file on her machines and has never stopped hacking for information since the first day after Emily’s death. They all have their own files for Doyle. They just don’t talk about them.

Ian Doyle is wanted for many things, but the death of a federal agent is at the top as far as they are concerned. Garcia assembles the team as soon as she knows for certain. The image on the screen is a bit blurry, but the man has been burned into their minds.

Doyle won’t go down without a fight. He doesn’t go quietly. They never expected that he would. There are those who want him alive and those who want him dead. They are past caring what others want and they’ve never allowed themselves to be a pawn for international agencies. It’s in the United States and they call the shots for this.

Hotch made two oaths. One a long time ago when he first joined the FBI and took his badge. The second months ago, over a year ago, to a man who cared just as much about the woman they were trying to protect as the rest of them. He made two oaths. He keeps both of them. He puts a bullet in the brain of Ian Doyle.

There is relief and vengeance and satisfaction that plays out on all of their faces. It is not enough though. There is still a missing presence.

Later, Hotch will slip to the back of the jet when everyone else is asleep or preoccupied. He will make one phone call and say only one thing:

“Bring her home.”

 

 

Her handler will call in the early dawn. Emily will remember because the sun will just be coming up and it will almost look poetic if she were inclined to think that way. She answers, thinking already how soon she can pack up and where everything is spaced out in the place that is essential for her to take. She nearly drops the phone when he tells her the news.

He tells her she will have to wait to be cleared, to make sure that there still aren’t any of Doyle’s commanders or such that would be looking for her, but that she can go home soon. Witness protection lifted, she can go home.

It’s been eleven months and some days. Her hair has gotten longer, but her face is still too thin. She dyes her hair dark and burns the letters she’s written and kept and moved with her.

Emily Prentiss looks in the mirror, and it’s Emily Prentiss that stares back.

 

 

One would think it would be easy to tell the truth.

The secret has been kept for so long that it's become normal. It should be as simple as just saying it, but it isn't. The truth sticks in the back of their throats as Hotch and JJ stand before the rest of the team. The gazes of their friends, of their family, are expectant. They have no idea what they are about to say, but they know there is something going on.

In the end, it’s Hotch who says it. It’s Hotch who kept it from them each time they mentioned her name in mourning and when their eyes grew sad at the empty desk in the bullpen. It’s Hotch who’s kept it on the back of his tongue and it’s he who lets it out.

Garcia is the first to speak. Her voice is hesitant and soft in the conference room. “What?”

The explanation dies as soon as Hotch opens his mouth.

“No. Emily’s dead,” Garcia’s voice rises in pitch. “We buried her. We were all there.”

JJ’s mouth turns up in a sad smile. “She’s not. She’s alive. We had to lie so Doyle didn’t find her.”

Morgan leaves the room, angry strides that carry him to the doors. They watch him walk all the way out and to the stairs.

Reid leaves next.

The room is quiet.

They will all come back later. They will be upset and hurt and feel left out. That will not change. But it will not matter anymore, or rather it will matter less, because she is coming back.

 

 

Emily picks at her fingers as the plane taxis to the terminal. She is the last to get off, lets everyone else out before her. She has nothing with her except for a passport and the clothes she’s wearing, not wanting to bring anything from over there back.

She knows that JJ is here, knows that she has at least one person waiting. JJ had called and taken over as her contact for reentry into the States. What she doesn’t know is if there are others.

The walk up the ramp and out into the main terminal is the longest walk she’s ever made.

She stops and feels tears prick at the back of her eyes.

There are seven people waiting for her.

 

 

They are the oddest looking group at the terminal. Garcia is bright, Hotch wears his suit, and Reid looks like he’s about to deliver a lecture, and those are only three of them. They shuffle their feet and shift from side to side, looking at the passengers departing. When they see her, all seven freeze and go still.

She is thin and pale and tired, but she is theirs.

They embrace her when she reaches them, catching her as she folds into them.

 

 

She is home.


End file.
